Thursday, December 18, 2008

Blue Ginger / ASPIRE [Boston]

By: Finance Foodie

I always like to find ways to combine my love of food with giving back to the community (fyi, some of us finance types have interests other than making gobs of money). Therefore, I want to alert all of you to the Blue Ginger/ASPIRE holiday fundraiser.ASPIRE (Asian Sisters Participating In Reaching Excellence) is an organization that provides underserved Asian-American high school girls with mentoring and leadership training. This December, when you donate $40 or more towards this worthy cause, you're entered into a raffle to win a four-course dinner with wine pairings at Blue Ginger, as well as a copy of Ming's Master Recipes: a tasty reward indeed! The details are below and you can donate here.

Blue Ginger, a Asian fusion restaurant located in Wellesley, MA, is owned by the highly regarded and very attractive chef Ming Tsai (you might have seen him on his show Simply Ming on PBS or on People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful list). I had the pleasure of dining here a few weeks ago with a member of my SupperClub and her wonderful family and friends.

Since I...errr....forgot to take pictures of the food*, I cannot consider this entry to be a full length review (A review without visuals is as painful as a blind man at the Louvre). However, I do want to highlight my delicious entree, the miso marinated butterfish (which, unlike the implication of the fish's name, was not greasy at all). The butterfish was extremely tender and flaky, and the miso sauce added just the right amount of "kick".

I must confess, I forgot to take food pictures* because my main mission of the night was to meet Chef Ming. And we would of missed him were it not for our awesome (and well tipped) waitress who alerted us to his impending departure. Upon hearing this, our table immediately rallied like the stock market after an interest rate cut to catch him before he left. Awesomely, Ming was incredible gracious and chatted /posed for pics with our party.

What's cookin', good lookin' :)

So readers, the moral of this pseudo-review is: A donation to ASPIRE is your chance to have a great meal and meet a great chef, while helping a great cause. Afterall, 'tis the season to be jolly and (j)enerous!